Mighty Bargain Hunter

V from Violent Acres and I might have something in common

May 28th, 2010 | by mbhunter |

Totally on a lark I visited the blog Violent Acres after staying away for a long time. The points that “V” makes in her posts are frequently flashes of brilliance, despite all of the cursing. I refrained posting about her work because I resented being put in my place as unworthy of being able to even pay her a compliment on her blog.  But, it looks like the blog has comments enabled now (for whatever reason), so this is a Good Thing.  A blog isn’t a blog without comments enabled.

Anyway, one post series she did a while back (3 1/2 years ago) was financially-related, and the last of the series outlined five steps that she took that helped her to become financially independent. (Warning: linked post contains strong language!)

The second point made a lot of sense to me.  She only invests in things that she enjoys. From her post:

I know a guy who is a whiz with stocks; he loves them. My husband, on the other hand, gets a huge kick out of investing in small businesses. Yet another friend is into precious metals. There are countless investment opportunities out there, but the trick is finding one that fascinates you.

Personally, I love real estate. I can walk into the biggest, dumpiest, most wrecked foreclosure on the market and find something cool about it. I adore single family homes, old buildings, abandoned restaurants and I’d rather go to an open house than the movies. I’m obsessively diligent about watching the market and at any point in time I could tell you with reasonable accuracy how many houses in my city are for sale, how long they’ve been on the market, and how much they’d have to go for to make money. Real estate is ‘my thing’ and I’m convinced the only reason I’m successful with it is because I enjoy it. Give me 10K and tell me to the play the stock market and it’s likely I’d be broke in a week. Give me 5K and a copy of a MLS and watch me go.

The key ingredient isn’t so much what you invest in, but that you absolutely love it, can’t get enough of it, want to research it, want to put the time into learning about the investment so that you can do it wisely, and profitably.

For the past few years I’ve been wanting to dip my finger into real estate.  With the purchase of our new house I had the opportunity to try renting out our old house.  I must say that it was fun getting involved in the process:  calling around to ask for advice, learning how to fix up things in the house, touching up the walls, cleaning the floors and the carpets, developing a relationship with a property manager, getting insurance matters in place, and finally signing a lease with what appear to be really wonderful tenants.  It’s probably too early to tell whether I’ll enjoy investing in real estate in the long run, but I must say that I’ve mostly enjoyed it so far.

Getting the property ready to rent took a number of evenings and a bunch of phone calls over a few weeks, but it was something I could do and looked forward to doing.  I enjoyed it. There have been investments I haven’t enjoyed as much, and I’m not doing them anymore because they never really took off.  The reason that they didn’t take off, though, is probably because I didn’t enjoy them!

Maybe there are a few things in your portfolio that you don’t really enjoy?  Replace them with things you do.